


Can Belief Survive Betrayal

by gabrielandjackthenephilim



Category: Castlevania (Cartoon)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Episode: s03e09 Betrayal, Loss of Limbs, Loss of Trust, Multi, Trust Issues
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-15
Updated: 2020-05-16
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:14:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24206518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gabrielandjackthenephilim/pseuds/gabrielandjackthenephilim
Summary: Spoilers for season 3 episode 9. I really hated how this season ended for my favorite character Alucard, so I'm rewriting the ending as a story without death, but rather with redemption, love, and forgiveness. Sounds really cheesy but it's Castlevania, so there will be blood, gore, pain and a lot of struggling and overcoming emotional trauma before we get to anyone being happy. Working on this casually, not sure if there will be regular updates. Rape/Non-con is because of Sumi and Taka's deception.
Relationships: Alucard | Adrian Tepes | Arikado Genya/Sumi/Taka
Comments: 6
Kudos: 54





	1. The Betrayal

**Author's Note:**

> First part of chapter one is direct dialogue from the episode

Alucard gazed up at Sumi and Taka in shock, the bindings burning into his skin as he tried to process what was happening. The joy and euphoric bliss from moments before dissolved quickly into panic and pain as he strained against the painful trap, skin blistering as the bindings only tightened.

“What’s happening,” he asked, trying to remain calm. These were his friends…possibly more now…and he trusted them.

“You’ve been lying to us!” Taka accused, eyes narrowed in anger as he clenched the dagger harder.

“I have not…” Alucard began, attempting to sit up.

“You have!” Taka insisted, “because everybody lies to us. Everybody hides things from us.”

“You won’t help us because nobody helps us. We will work out how to move this castle,” Sumi added, her anger mirroring Taka’s.

“We will find all your secrets. We will use them to build our own empire,” Taka said, a triumphant smirk crossing his face as a lust for power came over him.

“I gave you everything,” Alucard protested, fury building at their betrayal.

“No, you didn’t,” Sumi told him, looming over him in a parody of their earlier actions, her hair falling to the sides of her face and brushing against his chest. 

“Nobody does. We have been lied to and cheated across half of the world. Do you expect us to believe you’re different?” Her speech increased in hostility as it continued, her expression moving from hurt to a deeper anger, and Alucard found he recognized the look in her eyes. It was the same look he had seen in his father’s eyes after his mother’s death. Hatred and betrayal burned there. His mother’s words echoed in his head:

_Be better than them_

“I tried to be,” he said out loud, responding both to Sumi and his mother’s voice, his heart aching.

“You haven’t taught us magic,” said Taka, drawing Alucard’s attention as he shook with rage. “You won’t move the castle. You’re just like all the others!”

“Please!” Alucard tried again to reason with them, knowing the pain that had led to their perception of the world, wondering how he had been so blind before. “I know your lives have been hard, but the world is not against you,” he said, willing them to listen as his father had not. “ _I_ am not against you.”

“Of course you’re not,” Taka said scornfully, angling his body away and towards Sumi, holding out his dagger. The two of them clutched their knives with both hands.

“You’re already dead,” Sumi declared with finality.

Alucard knew that his time to come up with another solution was running out. He knew he could use his sword and end it swiftly, but the idea of killing them just as he had killed his father, at failing again, made his heart cry out. He wasn’t sure he could survive another heartbreak if he killed them, wasn’t sure that he could still cling to his mother’s beliefs. Wasn’t sure his father hadn’t been right all along. 

In a burst of energy, he tried to force the bindings off with demonic magic, but they twisted further into his skin and he fell back to the bed. Sumi and Taka prepared to plunge in their daggers.

Alucard’s eyes widened as he realized what he had to do. He turned his head away as his sword arched through the air, slicing off the hands holding the top of the daggers, one hand of each of them. Blood spattered across the bedsheets and wall as the two screamed and Alucard’s sword flew down to rest against their necks stilling them as they cried from the shock and pain.

“I told you my father didn’t like magical weapons,” Alucard said softly. “I did not say I didn’t use them.” Clutching their stumps and panting, they glared at him with eyes full of hate. “I never lied to you.” Alucard finished, still not looking at them, their blood splattered across his body.

The two humans lost consciousness, quickly succumbing both to blood loss and fear. As Taka faded out of awareness, the bindings holding Alucard to the bed relaxed. For a few moments he simply laid on the bed, until he felt a few of the blood droplets running down his side.

“ _I should bind their arms before they die. There isn’t much time,_ ” he thought, and he rose before mechanically tying tourniquets on the stumps, surveying the wounds, noting that they were clean cuts. Using his speed, he rushed to the area of the castle that had been his mother’s quarters and gathered medical equipment, still in a daze. When he returned, he dosed both of his patients with opium to ensure they would not wake for several hours before beginning to sew their hands back to their arms.  
He had seen his mother reattach limbs several times, many severed in farming accidents. While having never performed the surgery himself, he knew the basic steps, knew the importance of time and the type of cut in the success of reattachment. He began by placing egg whites on the wound to prevent infection before proceeding to sew skin and muscle back together. He worked with a clinical detachment, his mother’s explanations ringing in his head.

When he was finished, he debated the merits of moving them, before deciding not to risk it. They had both lost a lot of blood. Frowning, he propped them against his pillows and pulled blankets over them to keep them warm, before going in search of blood elsewhere in the castle. He knew that frozen blood would still be good even if it had been collected before his father passed and he guessed that his father would have begun stocking the freezer in anticipation of his army’s needs.  
He sniffed the blood until he found the right types for Taka and Sumi. Then with bottled blood in hand he went back to his new bedroom, where they lay still and pale, their breathing shallow.

He had never witnessed a blood transfusion, because his mother and father had agreed it would bring up too many questions with the ordinary humans who came to his mother for care in the many towns they traveled to. He read the instructions from one of the medical books, starting the transfusion with Taka, because it appeared he had lost the most blood and his pulse was weaker. Next, he moved on to Sumi. When he was satisfied that they were both stable, he rested at the edge of the bed, seeing the beginning of the sunrise along the window. 

As shock and adrenaline wore off, Alucard’s hands began to tremble. He blinked and somehow he was in his childhood bedroom without remembering how he had gotten there. His father’s ring sat on the table, a bitter reminder of what he had lost.  
“ _They’re like him,_ ” he thought, touching the scar on his chest that his father had left. He still remembered it vividly; the man who had raised him, who had swung him around on his shoulders and promised to love him forever, slicing his chest open without any trace of that love. As he brushed the scar he hissed as his hand touched the burns from the bindings. He glanced down, surprised, having forgotten about them. The painful reminder of Sumi and Taka’s betrayal broke through his haze and his brief reprieve through dissociation was broken. 

Collapsing on the floor where Dracula’s body had burned, Alucard began to cry.


	2. The Next Morning

As Sumi woke up, her first awareness was the pain radiating from her right arm. Her eyes blinked blearily as she focused on the canopy above her, feeling nauseous and overheated, with a headache that made her want nothing more than to close her eyes again and drift back into a comfortable lack of consciousness. She heard a rustle beside her and turned her head slightly to see Taka. She started to smile and then froze.

Covering Taka’s white nightshirt was dried blood, lots of it, splattered along his body like some grotesque painting. The events of the previous night came rushing back, panic flooding her and chasing away the grogginess as she remembered how they had thought they had Alucard at their mercy, only to be taken down at the last second.

“ _He is just like Cho_ ,” she thought tears filling her eyes. He had deceived them, made a game out of it, always two steps ahead. He must have been waiting for them to strike all along, playing with them, letting them think they had control. He had used his sword to spar with them, had made them feel almost like equals, had warned them about the threats a vampire posed, as if they didn’t already know, all the while knowing they could do nothing he didn’t want them to. She knew the only reason he would have let them live was so that he could exact his revenge on them while they were aware. What tortures he had planned Sumi wasn’t sure, but she knew it ended with their blood under his fangs. Cho never allowed her victims suicide, made them powerless even in this sense. But it was possible that Alucard had left them, that they were alone and Sumi could at the very least protect Taka, ensure that he would never wake up to the horrors they faced. He was right there; she would only have to lean over and snap his…

Oh. Right. That’s why her arm hurt.

Now that she had focused on the pain, the agony pulsed in waves, leaving her gasping as she held back a scream, unwilling to draw Alucard’s attention. Slowly, she lowered her eyes to look at her mutilated arm, expecting to see a stump. Instead she saw her hand, discolored and incredibly swollen, a white cloth stained red wrapped around the wrist to hold the stump and hand together, she assumed, and to keep her from bleeding out before Alucard returned.

She attempted to move her fingers, but it was useless. Her arm felt weighed down, impossibly heavy. They were worms on a hook. Barely able to move, she wouldn’t be able to kill either of them if she couldn’t get her hands on a weapon, but it was hard to scan the room through her blurring eyes and the mixture of bile and panic building up in her chest.

A groan came from her right.

Taka’s eyes fluttered open, face scrunched. Sumi’s heart twisted withy pity. Taka had always been more sensitive to discomfort than she was. When he moved as though to sit up, she interrupted quickly.

“Don’t move,” Sumi said, doing her best to keep her voice level and calm.

“You’re hurt. Keep lying down,” she coaxed, watching Taka closely, his eyes fluttering weakly as he collapsed back on the pillow.

“Sumi…” he moaned again weakly, and shifting her body so as to reach him with her good arm without disturbing the injured one, she leaned over and brushed the hair away from his forehead, noticing as she did so that he had a fever. As Taka sank back into an uneasy sleep, she let the tears roll down her cheek.

“You’re awake,” came the dreaded voice from the doorway and Sumi stiffened. Alucard’s tone was colder than she had ever heard it, even when he had first found them and they had been aiming an arrow at his head. “How do you feel?” He asked carrying a closed basket with him and walking in with deliberate steps, his presence like a cold spot expanding and leaving Sumi trembling with silent fear and hate. Summoning up her courage, she grinned at him, the role of happy slave draping over her like a comforting blanket. If she couldn’t protect herself and Taka, the least she could do was keep Alucard’s attention on herself while Taka was recovering. He obviously wanted them in pain.

“Well rested and full of health! Life in a castle certainly is a life of luxury, all of these pillows and blankets, and of course the exercise,” she intoned with a smirk, eyeing him up and down to emphasize her point before giving an exaggerated yawn. “Still, breakfast in bed from my vampire slave would be a nice way to start the day.” As she glanced at Alucard she took vicious pleasure in seeing the flush of anger that was creeping up his neck. Without speaking he strode towards her and despite her resolve she couldn’t prevent herself from flinching at the sudden movement as he drew closer. He felt both her forehead and Taka’s without acknowledging the flinch, then opened the basket, which, to Sumi’s surprise, held not weapons but clean bandages and eggs.

“Ah, so you did bring us breakfast after all!” She jabbed, hiding her confusion with a chipper tone.

“Try to hold still,” Alucard said without looking at her, his focus solely on her bandages as he poured warm water over them before beginning to unwrap them. When the bandages had been removed completely, Sumi turned her head away and closed her eyes so that she wouldn’t have to watch him suck her blood from the tender area. To her surprise she felt not a stab of pain but rather a liquid coolness, and her head snapped back to see him dumping egg on her wound. She gaped in outrage. Was it not enough that he would use her for a meal? Perhaps his human side couldn’t stomach the blood alone. The indignity of it made her scowl at him and try to jerk her arm away, but his hand clenched so tightly on her upper arm that she was sure she would have bruises from his fingers and marks where his nails had broken skin.

“I told you to hold still. If your hand is ever going to be functional again it needs attended to,” Alucard growled, baring his fangs at her, the earlier irritation peaking through again. Holding her firmly, he pulled out some of the bandages and, to her confusion, re-wrapped her arm before pushing her onto the bed so that she was laying down again.

“Stay.” He said, moving over to Taka and repeating the process with him.

“What will you do to us?” Sumi asked after a few minutes of silence as she watched him care for Taka.

“My mother was a healer who believed in second chances. I have chosen to honor her memory, even if it is far more than either of you deserve. You will stay here until your hands are healed, then you will leave this castle and never return. I don’t care where you go, I don’t care what you do, as long as your poisonous presence is far away from me,” Alucard hissed, eying her disdainfully as he gathered the basket’s items and turned to leave, pausing in the doorway.

“I will bring food later when Taka is awake,” he said, before pulling the door shut behind him.  
Trembling and exhausted from the events of the morning, Sumi allowed her eyes to drift closed and her last though before fading back into sleep was how long Alucard’s pretense of playing nurse would last.

**Author's Note:**

> Fun fact! Egg whites can kill bacteria and prevent infection when applied to wounds and people used this tactic in the middle ages even though no one knew why it worked. Eventually it became lost to history, thought of as just superstition when it was discovered in remote places, then in 1943 a scientist discovered the antimicrobial properties because egg whites starve bacteria of iron. Shakespeare actually talks about it in King Lear, proving it was something that was well- known and accepted once upon a time. It fits well within the Castlevania theme of "humans figured things out then forgot" and I needed them to not die of infection so yay for human adaptivity.


End file.
